Anna Denning Mystery Series Box Set: Books 1–3

by Karin Kaufman

  “I’ve got her,” Paxton shouted. “Stop it now, I’ve got her.”

  25

  Anna heard Gene’s SUV in her driveway and hurried to the door, opening it just as he raised a finger to ring the bell. “Hey,” he said, grinning.

  “Hey, Mr. Westfall.” She took hold of his arm, pulled him inside, and shut the door.

  With one arm he encircled her waist and drew her near. Her hands cradling his face, she kissed him, and as she did, Jackson ran to greet him, pressing the top of his head against the back of Gene’s knee.

  “Jackson, boy, how are you?” Gene regained his hold on the package slipping from his hand and bent to give Jackson a pat.

  “What’s that?” Anna said.

  “Something for you.” Gene laid the gift-wrapped package on Anna’s kitchen counter and watched eagerly for her reaction.

  “It looks like a frame.” She did her best to keep a straight face. “Please tell me it’s not a painting from Sparrow House.”

  Gene frowned. “If that were my house, I’d remove all the so-called artwork, toss it all out, and paint the walls white. Start fresh.”

  Anna reached across the counter and lifted a courier envelope, waving it. “Paxton just paid me. It was hand delivered an hour ago.”

  “That’s very kind of him.”

  “It’s been less than twenty-four hours since Nilla was arrested. I don’t know how he managed to even think of me after what happened.”

  Gene bent down again to attend to Jackson, giving his ears a well-appreciated scratch. “I still can’t believe you released him on Nilla.”

  Anna squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t believe it herself. It was haunting her—sending her beloved Jackson toward an almost certain death. She looked down at her dog, the essence of loyalty and innocence. It helped a little, but only a little, to know that Jackson would have broken free and gone for Nilla anyway, the moment Gene entered the house and she struck him with the rose thorns.

  “I know how much you love him,” Gene said.

  “Jackson had no idea of the danger I was putting him in.”

  “Of course not—look at him.”

  Jackson wagged his tail, and as they continued to focus their attention on him, his wag grew and became a full helicopter twirl.

  “See? He’s fine.” Gene laughed and the twirl of Jackson’s tail increased in velocity, causing his body to sway and his tail to thump against the base of the kitchen island.

  “I don’t want to think about it. I had no choice and I’d do it again, but I don’t want to think about it.” She turned to the package on the counter. “So what’s this for? It’s not my birthday.”

  Gene didn’t respond. Anna saw him gnawing at the inside of his lower lip, something he never did, and her heart fluttered.

  “I hope I didn’t do something wrong,” he said, tilting his head at the package.

  “Wrong?” She untied the gold-colored bow, slipped the ribbon from the package, and peeled back the wrapping. Her hands, one on either side, clasped a black frame.

  There, nestled in a bed of sage-colored fabric, was Sean’s mandolin. Or rather, the top of it, its slivered wood drawn together and glued in place, leaving a clearly damaged but nearly complete top. The instrument’s sides were gone, but they had been crushed, not merely splintered. What remained was the face of the mandolin under glass. Framed, a work of art.

  Anna looked from the mandolin to Gene, whose expression of tender apprehension almost made her laugh for joy.

  “It’s beautiful.” She held it up for a better look, gently resting the bottom of the frame on the counter.

  “You’re not upset?”

  “How could I be?”

  “I snuck into your house.”

  “You finally used the key I gave you. How did you do this?”

  “Jazmin did most of the reconstruction.”

  “Jazmin? You’re kidding.”

  He shook his head. “She was amazing. She’s an artist. She worked on it during her lunch breaks and all last night.”

  Anna rested the frame on the counter. “You’re talking about Jazmin Morningstar, right? The girl with the orange hair? The one who takes every opportunity to make snide comments or argue with me?”

  “She’s a kid, Anna, and she’s younger than her years in a lot of ways. But she likes you. And she admires you.”

  Anna frowned. “She’s never said anything remotely admiring when it comes to me.”

  “But she has.” Gene laid a finger on the frame. “Right there.”

  Tears came to Anna’s eyes. Gene hugged her and spoke softly. “You don’t have to forget the past. I’m not asking you to. Remember it, cherish it, and let it be in its proper place. One day there’ll be no dividing line between past, present, and future. It will all be one.”

  Anna shifted in her seat and looked to the back of Gene’s SUV, where Jackson and Riley sat side by side on their mattress pad, keeping watch on the westbound cars as they passed.

  “They think they’re going to the park,” Anna said, turning back and adjusting her shoulder harness.

  “Maybe we could take them on the way back.” Gene continued east on Highway 34, heading toward Loveland and Fort Collins. Ponderosa and lodgepole pines grew thickly along the highway, though many of the pines, Anna noted sadly, were dead from beetle kill, brown from top to bottom as though a fire had passed through and killed but not consumed them. Close to the road, thriving in the sunshine that now broke through to the forest floor, were young evergreens.

  The highway bent south then curved east again as it wound south of the Devil’s Backbone, a sandstone hogback on the outskirts of Loveland. “I talked to Schaeffer first thing this morning,” Gene said.

  “Was he angry about last night?”

  “Oh, yeah.” The skin around his eyes crinkled as he smiled. Apparently Schaeffer wasn’t that angry. “But when he asked me for your cell number last night, I grilled him. He told me about the mark on Devin Sherwood’s back and said it might be a small scratch but it was hard to tell because it was so infected. Devin was a gardener, he probably got scratched all the time, but why would he have a scratch on his back? And why infected? I remembered reading about the flower gardens on the Sparrow House grounds and I had a bad feeling. And since I was going to bring you dinner anyway . . .”

  “You really did bring dinner?”

  “I left it in the car. I saw someone standing by the window, holding something, moving around. I got a very bad feeling.”

  “I’m glad you did.”

  “Of course, Schaeffer had the same bad feeling, but he wasn’t transporting dinner.”

  “He was only a few minutes behind you.”

  “I think he’s feeling a little guilty about that.”

  “He shouldn’t. He’s a good cop. I don’t think he ever believed Devin died of a drug overdose.”

  “He was going to call and ask you and Liz to talk to him at the police station.” He gave her a sideways glance. “His way of finding out more and getting you safely out of the house.”

  Gene made a left onto Wilson Avenue and headed north. The grasses in the open spaces on the west side of the avenue were a deep green, here and there speckled with pink, clover-like flowers, and lilac bushes up and down the avenue, further along in the season than their high-country cousins, were blooming wildly. Anna loved the rain, but even she had her limits, and after six days of downpours and drizzles, it was good to see the sun—and what the rain had left behind.

  “By the way, Schaeffer told me Lawrence probably passed out Wednesday night, when you heard that loud thud, but he died later on Thursday.”

  “He was alive up there for hours?” Anna stared blankly ahead. “I knew something was wrong. Why didn’t I say something to someone?”

  Gene checked his rearview mirror, slowed, then pulled the car off the road and into a townhome parking lot. He shifted in his seat and met her eyes. “I wasn’t going to tell you that, but I figured you’d fin
d out anyway. Let’s get this straight. Nilla made a paste with the seeds, coated a few thorns, and scratched Lawrence, just like Devin. He didn’t know it, but he was literally dying the last time you saw him.”

  “I wonder . . .”

  “Stop wondering. By the time he hit the floor, he was in a coma. There is nothing you could have done. Schaeffer told me there’s nothing in nature more deadly than those seeds. And if you’d told Nilla what you were thinking, she would have gone after you next.”

  “But—”

  “You feel guilty. I know. Stop it. You can’t fix everything.”

  “I know, I know.” An image came to her mind of a small woman in a yellow jacket, lamenting forever her silence about an innocent man’s death and making certain she paid the penalty for it the rest of her life. Alice in some way probably found comfort in her decades-long suffering. After all, pain brings you nearer to the thing you love by keeping it alive, and at one time in her life, she had loved Matthew Birch. And Sparrow House. “I don’t want to pull an Alice Ryder on you.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Nothing. I’ll explain later.”

  “Anyway, Nilla had it all planned. When the rosary box was in the library, she cut a seed off the rosary and crushed it under plastic. Later, she told Lawrence to steal the box and hide it in the basement. If anyone was going to be found with it, best it was him. She was probably going to throw it out when she had the chance.”

  “How did she know the seeds were toxic?”

  Gene shrugged. “Family stories? Maybe she got curious and looked them up on the Internet. I did. Did you know that abrin, the toxin in the seeds, remains deadly for decades? It’s almost impossible to break down. And a speck of abrin the size of a pinhead can kill a man. All Nilla had to do was break through Devin’s shirt with one thorn. Just one tiny scratch. Nothing anyone would pay attention to.”

  “Liz stopped me from touching those rosaries.” She threw out her hand, resting it on Gene’s arm. “Wait a minute. I just thought of something.”

  “Schaeffer’s ahead of you on that.” He checked the road and pulled back onto the highway. “He’s having Charlene Birch’s body exhumed. Between Nilla insisting she saw Matthew Birch push Charlene down the stairs and the toxic seeds on her rosary, he has reason to reopen her case.”

  “You two had a good talk this morning.”

  “I wanted answers and he was in a mood to give them to me.” A smile spread across his face. “By the way, he said it was OK to give out his Elk Park Police office extension.”

  “Good. While you were talking to Schaeffer, I was talking to Liz. She’s decided to write an exposé on Sparrow House for her website.”

  “She’ll have advertisers eating out of her hand.”

  “I hope so. She’s going to run it as a series, interview Alice if she can, and call it ‘Ghost Myth Exposed’ or ‘Sparrow House Unveiled’—she was brimming with titles.”

  The series would have none of the unexplained bumps in the night or supernatural thrills of Liz’s earlier posts, Anna knew. Those bumps, and more, had been explained, and the reality behind them was more horrifying than what her foolish imagination had conjured up. The moving paintings and the sound of dripping water, both of which had so disturbed Charlene Birch in the 1970s? Anna was willing to bet that Matthew Birch had moved paintings and fiddled with a faucet or two—anything to get back at his wife for being a believer. Anything for spite.

  The Sparrow House ghost had been explained, and the power she held over Birches and trick-or-treaters alike had evaporated, but real evil had taken place in that house, perhaps going back to the day the first Birch entered its newly built walls.

  At the south end of Fort Collins, Gene pointed west, to the foothills near Horsetooth Reservoir. They were green, a rare sight.

  “Beautiful,” Anna said. “I wonder what will happen to Paxton, Bee, and Mitch.”

  “Paxton will probably get less than he wanted on the house and take the deal anyway.”

  “Just to get out. He can’t stay there alone.”

  “And from what you’ve told me about Bee and Mitch, they’ll be fine, and they won’t have to hide how they feel about each other.”

  “I wonder why Alice dragged Mitch into this, risking his job by making him steal for her. He’s her nephew.”

  “Maybe he enjoyed it.” Gene gave her a sideways glance. “You said he didn’t like Paxton Birch, and he knew that one way or another he’d lose his job soon.”

  “Alice dragged me into this too. She should have gone to the police instead of playing games. Codes, letters. All to make sure someone besides her took responsibility.”

  “Her experience told her to be afraid of the police.”

  Gene made a right onto Drake Road. Anna had never seen a Colorado spring so lovely, or so delicate. Irises and tulips, roses already blooming. A hedge of lilacs in full blossom, their blooms and shoots pressing hard on a cedar fence.

  “I was thinking about that,” Anna said. “She’s let what happened in that house steer her life ever since. Everything revolves around that one day in October 1970.” Why had Alice allowed herself to be trapped in the past, carrying an old note in a plastic bag, wearing old clip earrings? Was 1970 the last time she’d felt alive, in spite of all that had happened that terrible day?

  “It’s a waste.”

  “Gene, even her favorite color stayed the same. All these years.”

  Alice was a ghost. The only ghost Sparrow House had ever known. She had willingly become one, haunting Matthew Birch—and all who lived and worked in his mansion—by creating the Sparrow House legend, the calling of the ghost, using his own words. Then finally, pale and dreadful, she’d become the past.

  “Norwood Drive is a couple blocks from here. What’s the address again?” Gene asked.

  “It’s 2201.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to come in?”

  “I’ll be fine. I’ll tell her what I know, answer any questions, then give her Schaeffer’s number.”

  “Her husband might be there.”

  “When do you think she remarried?”

  “Decades ago, I hope.” He glanced at her then back at the houses lining the road.

  “Yeah.” Anna wondered how long it had taken Nancy Ellison to move on after the death of her husband Kurt. Was she happy? Was her widowhood long behind her, or did it live on as her own private ghost? Unlike Alice, had Nancy chosen life?

  “I was going to tell you about my dog Daisy,” Gene said. “She died five years ago and I still have her collar and tags. I have no intention of getting rid of them.”

  Anna smiled. “I chose well.”

  “There it is.” Gene pulled to the curb and turned off the ignition.

  It was a ranch-style home, brown brick, nothing extraordinary. The name Goodwin was painted on the mailbox. Someone at the window peeled back the curtain then let it drop. A moment later the front door opened and Nancy Ellison, alongside her husband, stepped into the sun.

  Copyright 2012 Karin Kaufman

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  The Sacrifice

  Anna Denning Mysteries Book 3

  1

  Anna Denning turned her attention to the afternoon sunlight filtering through the orange-red leaves of the maple tree outside Alex Root’s living-room window. Half the tree’s leaves still clung to its branches, evidence of what thus far had been a warm October in the Colorado mountains. Cold nights, but mild, sunny days. November would bring quick decay followed by a cleansing snow, but late October was ripe, the air thick with the odors of countless wiltin
g flowers in neglected gardens.

  One of the group members will ask a question, Anna thought. Relax and give them time.

  Alex cleared his throat, dislodging the sort of stubborn phlegm usually heard in a seventy-something smoker, not a trim, healthy-looking man in his late forties. “I have a question. You say genealogical research is like detective work. How would you go about investigating someone’s more recent past?”

  “That depends on what you want to know,” Anna replied, relieved someone had broken the ice.

  “Doing a little investigating, Alex?” said Maddy Gilmartin, swallowing a smile and pushing her long auburn hair from one shoulder. She leaned forward on the couch and retrieved her mug from the coffee table, a wide, pink-gold wedding band on her left hand showing clearly against the white ceramic. Everything about Maddy was pink or red. From her hair to her coral lip gloss, red sweater, and flushed cheeks—the latter just flushed enough to suggest a skin condition rather than a rosy glow.

  “I’m just curious about the proper methodology,” Alex said. He looked from Maddy to Anna and waited.

  “Using genealogical and other databases, you can find if someone is married, a wedding date”—Anna shot a look at Maddy’s wedding band—“a divorce date, an occupation, where someone was born, siblings’ names and occupations, the value of any land or houses owned, the contents of a will, that sort of thing.” She laughed and pushed her glasses back up on her nose. “Quite a lot, really.”

  “That’s frightening,” Maddy said. “A product of the age we live in, I suppose.”

  “No, no.” Paul Gilmartin gave his wife a reassuring smile. “Information like that has always been public record.”

  “But it’s on the Internet now,” Alex said.

  “That only changes the speed with which you can retrieve it,” Paul said.

  “Speed is everything.” A crooked smile worked its way from one corner of Zoey Eberhardt’s mouth to the other. “That and access.” The woman leaned her head against the back of her armchair, the light from the window playing on her short dark hair, the backward bend of her head emphasizing her long neck and the braided leather necklace at her collarbone.